In Turkey, Museums Need Reciprocity, Not Only Repatriation

Fig 1.

Ernst Barlach, “Pietà. Project of a War Memorial in Stralsund.” A woman holds a dead soldier on her lap. Bronze figure after a plaster model of 1932.

(Photo by W. Sauber. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G%C3%BCstrow_Gertrudenkapelle_-_Barlachsammlung_Pieta.jpg].)

In spring 2006, works of the German sculptor Ernst Barlach (1870–1938) were exhibited in Istanbul and Ankara (Fig. 1). I remember my amazement as I walked among the sculptures placed in the courtyard of the administrative building of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, a restored Ottoman han. Amazed, because I had never experienced in Ankara an exhibit like this, works of a distinguished foreign artist. Indeed, that exhibit was unique. Although private museums in Istanbul, such as the Sakıp Sabancı Museum and the Pera Museum, have shown art works brought from abroad, museums in Ankara and other Turkish cities, almost entirely state museums, have rarely done so, even with the help of outside institutions (in this case, the Goethe Institute). This is an avenue that needs to be pursued. Although the repatriation of items illegally taken from Turkey deserves support, particularly since the UNESCO conventions of the 1970s, the educative and cultural mission of museums should not stop here but should promote reciprocal arrangements with foreign museums and institutes. The benefits to the Turkish public would be huge (Fig. 2).

The Turkish museum is typically a fortress, a place where objects found in the country are stored and secured. Sources of the objects are typically archaeological excavations, but other provenances can include construction sites, abandoned churches (Orthodox icons painted before the Orthodox-Muslim population exchange, carried out between Greece and Turkey in 1923), abandoned cemeteries (tombstones of Muslims, Christians, and Jews), farm fields, anywhere really.

Highlights of a museum’s collection will be displayed for the public. Certain museums have outstanding collections, with many unique items. The Istanbul Archaeological Museum, which contains objects excavated during the late Ottoman Empire in its provinces of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria-Palestine, and Cyprus as well as discoveries from Turkey, Ottoman and Republican, is preeminent. Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is key for pre-classical Turkey. Regional museums, developed since World War II at an ever accelerating pace, contain recent finds that can certainly be of great importance, but the range of these museums is local—with occasional exchanges from other regional museums, although not always identified as such.

Displays tend to be set for a long duration. Updating is infrequent. Objects not used in a display will be condemned to the storerooms, to be seen only by museum personnel or by scholars if they have applied for formal permission from the museum or from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Directors of ongoing excavations are normally granted access to objects found at their sites, at least during the period an excavation or study season is in progress (usually the summer months). Objects without a pedigree—unpublished or unprovenanced artifacts—languish forgotten or ignored, because the outside researcher has no way to request to see them. The researcher cannot provide the identification needed for this request, because he or she will not have access to the museum inventories, with their numbers.

Fig 2.

On a T-shirt designed for a Turkish tour group in Berlin, a young giant on the frieze of the Great Altar, Pergamon, sheds tears of blood for the end of his exile in Germany and his return to Bergama, Turkey. T-shirt designed by Ertan Turgut.

(Photo by M.-H. Gates.)

The focus of most museums is on antiquity. The medieval and early modern world—Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman—is typically a sideline. The so-called “ethnographic museums” serve as repositories for Ottoman objects, such as clothing, other textiles, woodwork, furniture, household possessions (ceramics, embroideries), calligraphy (Quran manuscripts, imperial documents), weapons, and a range of metal objects. Recreations of rooms with mannequins to illustrate aspects of daily life, such as marriage practices (henna night), are frequently seen.

The large...